This whole subject came about during a discussion on orbs and shadow people, and purported photo evidence. The trouble with most "ghost hunters" is that they use either a flash or IR light, both of which can illuminate particles of dust and bugs etc. They also create shadows which in the right instance can be misconstrued. So how do we remove this? As we like to say "to get the real picture as they do with the Hubble, take away background noise that you know is there", in this case the direct light source that may be creating false positives. If you catch something under those conditions it will be a stronger indication that something was there. I had the good fortune to go on an investigation at the Ferrar School in Iowa with Shane Feek, who introduced to me the notion of taking long exposure pictures using manual settings on a camera. By doing this you are letting the camera soak up the low ambient light without a direct light source causing interference. I am not a photographer, but there are a few variables on a manual camera that Shane showed me, and by playing around you can get some really great shots in near darkness. Yes, near darkness, absolute darkness will not work, there has to be some sort of ambient light. So how do we do this? The first step is getting your hands on a camera that can take photos with manual settings. I went on Ebay and found a used Nikon D70 with lens etc for around $100. Your camera might have manual settings, give it a check. So now we have a camera we can set manually, what are we setting? Basically we want it to absorb as much light as possible in a shortest amount of time (which by the way is a lot longer than you are used to. The settings we will be looking at are: ISO - The amount of light your camera captures. ISO 200 captures 2x more than ISO 100. Beware, increase in ISO also increases the graininess of the picture. Aperture - The size of the lens opening. The aperture is given in f numbers, the smaller the number the bigger the opening, which is good for low light allowing more light in. for example f/2.2 is a bigger opening than f/2.8 Shutter Speed - How long the shutter stays open to allow light in. The higher the number the longer the shutter will stay open, meaning again, more light getting in. Format - Setting your camera to RAW format means that it will collect much more detail over for example jpeg. Because the details will be hard to see in low light that's the format for this application. Now you have these settings its a trade off and I can only recommend that you take an evening and juggle these variables to get a feel for what works for your camera. Also each place will have different light levels, so there is no hard and fast formula that will get it right all the time. Here is a more in depth article discussing the pros and cons of each setting. Good luck, and I must add that its kind of fun narrowing down the best setting for each environment.

Last night I was recording the podcast "Seeking the Paranormal" with my co-hosts Adam and Sarah and the subject was reincarnation. Sarah had done a lot of research before the show as she always does, including the work of Professor Ian Stevenson, and I think she was a little overwhelmed by the amount of work that has been done on the subject, as well as the depth of the studies. Sarah opened the show with the basic question, do we believe in reincarnation. Sarah knows I have done a lot of reading over the years including the work of Stevenson, Peter Fenwick, and others, and I could feel her incredulity when I stated that while it was a possibility I wasn't sold on the idea. Then came the question "what does it take to convince you?" And there's the rub. What does it take to convince people that something is true? We live in the age of information, with all kinds of theories both objective and subjective, we have fake information pushing an agenda, and we have wishful thinking being forced through with just dogged determination and sometimes open hostility. How do we determine where to hang our hat? Personally, I like peer-reviewed studies carried out objectively, i.e. a study that will try to trip itself up using control groups and double-blind methods. Also to add weight I like to see studies that have been replicated with the same results. If a majority of educated people, after these studies, decide that this thing is probably true, then I'm in. To add to this, the idea must be further challenged as time goes on as new observations and theories look to be true, and if it still holds up that's even more weight added. There is a thing in science called the half-life of truths. That is to say that much of what we have decided to be a true fact about the universe may at some time be either proven to be wrong or will need to be revised with caveats. That is fine and good because Science is not a religion and is bound only by objectivity (which I will get to later), which means as we learn more it will change the nature of what we think we know. We went from Newtonian Physics to general relativity and relativistic statistical mechanics. This does not invalidate Newton's work but adds to it, and removes some of the absolute statements. On the shoulders of giants... Science doesn't know everything. My personal single most hated statement in the paranormal community. [INSERT FOLKLORE HERE} must be true because science doesn't know everything. That just means people are either too lazy or self-obsessed to actually put in the work that science requires to get good foundations under an idea. Fuzzy photos misunderstood equipment or pareidolia ridden recordings are not proof, they are at best observations, and maybe a starting point. They are not the alpha and omega. In my experience, they are also not open to question unless you want some form of abuse, which leads to my second most hated statement thrown out there by the paranormal community "Scientists are close-minded". Science is carried out by human beings, and as such have emotional and objectivity failings the same as everyone else. This can lead to bias in studying an idea, but there are methods in place to minimize these and at the end of everything there is peer review where these things are (hopefully) rooted out. The problem with this may be that there are not enough hours in the day to study fringe work until it becomes necessary or relevant, so a paper is published and put on hold until it becomes relevant to another study that can either confirm or refute its results. Papers with glaring flaws are just refuted and forgotten about or not published. So scientists are not closed-minded they study and put the work into many new ideas every day but do not get the time or funding to look at every wispy idea that comes down the tube. Paranormal studies are under-researched and understudied by their nature. There are many papers on the subject, but few that have been tested and reviewed to the detail that is needed for me to hang my hat on. Many mainstream theories can be used as a model for what we think may be going on in the paranormal field (Brane Theory, for example), but not many in this field take the time to learn, because "Hey, science doesn't know everything" right? That kind of attitude might be called close-minded. So if we take the example of Dr. Stevenson and his research. He spent 20 years or so collecting and collating past life stories from regression therapies and from children, and some very convincing testimonies are truly remarkable. To the cursory reader, they might be considered proof. However in science, this is allegorical evidence, that is stories describing something, and even though background checks into the purported past life turn up things that corroborate the story, the story is just a story. It convinces me that reincarnation is a possibility and that is what I may be getting told about. However, it needs to be taken further. The subjects were all put forward as candidates because they already had the story. I would like to see a study of random people to see how prevalent this really is. It is the right direction but not taken far enough for me to hang my hat on. Dr. Peter Fenwick in his studies on near-death experiences uses much of what DR Stevenson has done to corroborate what people see during their experience, so we see again one researcher building on another. But he freely admits it is just anecdotal. He has gone further in that he has done research into how consciousness must be flat-lined and do these experiences happen while it's flat-lined or while they are coming out of it. All this is valid research. However, Dr. Fenwick also acknowledges that there is much more to do to scientifically PROVE that brain and consciousness are separate and can exist apart. He explains that doing research on people dying would not get past the ethics board, or be funded. He has worked around this by collecting anecdotal evidence from hospice nurses, but again that is just statistics of 3rd party observers. And so the paranormal remains the paranormal, the hint is in the name. Nothing paranormal is proven or it would be normal. In my podcasts, I am often perceived as a skeptic or a dick or both, but the truth is I an open to the possibilities of many phenomena because science does not know everything. However, I will not throw out the baby with the bathwater and lose my sense of reality because it is the popular opinion in the majority of the audience. I like to investigate the paranormal claims to get the first-hand experience to form a foundation under my opinion. I will not get proof doing what I do because I am neither funded nor qualified to put out a paper of proof. To those investigators that think it is proven and normal phenomena I have the question, why are you investigating a proven thing? I don't investigate cars I know they are true. You may answer that you are investigating types of hauntings, which would be a fair point if you had unequivocally proven that hauntings happen beyond anecdotal evidence. To those that have read this far, thank you. I think that this is a great hobby (because that is what it is), and even amateur astronomers discover things, so I keep going trying to sort out what might be possible and get some foundation under it for the scrutiny of others. I hope you do too, and the first step in investigating anything is research, education, and the understanding of objectivity.

In these times of Corid-19, many of us are on lockdown and many of the sites we planned to visit are closed. What to do? Well there is much to do that we don 't usually find the time, or take the time to do. Here are some ideas on how to use the downtime. 1) Reflect on where you are going as an investigator In the general day to day, its easy to go to an investigation site and repeat what you did at the last one. While that's all fine and good for collecting data, are you actually evolving methods or digging deeper into any data you have found so far? Take the time to reflect what it is you are trying to achieve as an investigator, and make some notes. Are you looking to prove the existence of ghosts? Are you trying to get more I.T.C? if so what methods haven't you tried vs what you have tried? Apart from it being a fun hobby, what can you do to be more effective, and what data would you like to get to achieve that end. Furthermore, how do you get it in a way that you haven't done before? None of us are the perfect investigator, and having downtime gives us time to reflect on our weaknesses and our strengths. Most of us have an idea in our mind of how what we are looking for works, and now is a good time to apply the data we have to that idea and see how it stacks up. We can then get an idea of if we are heading in the right direction either with our ideas or with our investigation methods. 2) Design e xperiments to test theories Once we have a list of our ideas, we can create experiments to test those ideas. Not just ideas on the nature of what we are looking for, but our ideas of what equipment we are using and how it's interacting. Even IF it's interacting. For example if you are using a spiritbox, draw up some flashcards so you can see if it will repeat the words during an investigation. Test your equipment and ideas against something you can measure, if you establish baselines then you can spot anomalies much better. In fact its a good idea to test this in an environment that is not considered haunted. For example I'm pretty sure that my workshop isn't haunted, and is used as a baseline for all our experiments. Remember that when you are designing experiments that you also have to include negative results. In the above example of flashcards, we will not just wonder at the box when it gets one right we will also mark down when it doesn't. That way we get a clear picture of its effectiveness and a ratio number that can be measured across investigation sites. This applies to all equipment, the flashlight blink test, compass variables, EMF ranges etc. 3) Plan your next trips So planning where you are going to investigate is a fun part of the hobby, but how often do you stop after you have planned the location and route, hotels etc. Another aspect is to plan what it is you are actually looking to achieve at the location. If you have experiments planned, what they will be. What makes the site allegedly haunted, and how do you test for that? Another thing that may be overlooked is return visits. These are a great opportunity to concentrate on previous results and try to get corroborating data. If you plan a structure to the investigation your chances of getting usable data increase, and make the data more meaningful across investigations. If you have a structured group you can assign tasks before you even get there making the whole investigation run smoothly and increase your productivity while on site. Plan it like its a military operation. 4) Educate yourself To get any measurable data you are going to have to use instruments and tools. To be able to gain any insight you are going to have to understand what they are saying and what the numbers mean. Probably for many this is the least enjoyable part of the hobby, but you will be better equipped with a deeper understanding of physics. An understanding of what an EMF actually is and how it is created, in what measures from which source, will give you a much better insight as to what is really going on. A blip on a meter is not proof of a ghost, even if it does coincide with a question or two (remember the baseline exercise?). Physics will cover the basic theory of radio, electronics, light etc. All mediums we use to try to spot the interaction of the paranormal we are looking for. As you dig deeper you will recognize the weaknesses of each piece of equipment and be able to try to counter it giving you better data by taking away the background noise. 5) Revisit old data As you are doing all of the above, revisit old data. With new insights you will discover two things. The first is that there may be anomalies you may have missed. The second is that some of what you thought were anomalies are not. Sometimes when I look at our old published stuff I cringe, because I now know that its cause was probably not paranormal. This is normal, especially if you are going through the data fresh back from an investigation where you are sure what you experienced was paranormal in nature and your blood is up. However, after a cooling down period, and a little more knowledge, you will look at the data a little more dispassionately. Again, you may see something that you overlooked earlier eager to get to the good parts, or the good parts were enhanced by your imagination of what you thought was happening at the time. 6) Group meeting via social network You may think you are all on the same page, but it doesn't hurt to make sure. Use this time to reach out and see if any of the group members have something they either want to do or wish they did less of. Interest in certain aspects of the paranormal wax and wane, and as time goes on some group members may internalize or suppress feelings of dissatisfaction, or have ideas they haven't voiced. Now is a good time to get those ideas into the open and help form the group into an effective unit for the investigations coming up when this virus threat dissipates. Communication is always at the bedrock of a good group. 7) Check what other groups are doing Other groups will hopefully be doing different things. Its a good idea to take a look at what and how. Many groups have great ideas on how to tackle a specific problem, now is a good time to see what methods apply to what you are trying to achieve. Its also a good way to look at equipment outside of a sales blurb, and think of how it could be used to further your own data gathering. So hopefully this has given you some ideas, stay safe.

Some of the best advice I have ever received on paranormal investigating was from a physicist. When I asked him how to employ more objective methods, he told me about how they get those awesome pictures from the Hubble telescope. The original pictures are filled with noise from outside of the target, noise from the camera itself, gamma rays from space etc. Basically if you want a good picture remove the background noise. For me that equated to many of the stories attached to places I had visited, and phenomena I was there to investigate. The stories were the background noise. While writing my first book, Leaps of Faith: Ghost hunting and Objectivity, I dove into how objectivity should be at the core of good paranormal investigations. While doing this, and during investigations, I am struck by how many different beliefs there are as to what the paranormal is and how it supposedly works. I decided that to understand how the paranormal was represented today, I had to find out where the different narrations come from. How do we get the belief “going into the light”, and what was that belief? Where do spirit guides come from? I thought that to remove the background noise I would have to first have be able to identify it, and separate it from any true background. There are so many narratives about what happens to us after death that are are strong beliefs to many people. However, many ideas that agree on substance still vary on details. It is interesting to me that there seems to be a parallel with science, as things are observed theories (beliefs) are formulated or strengthened, or replaced with new ones. Belief systems need no empirical evidence, just a personal intuition that if feels right. Indeed to many beliefs that feeling is evidence that spirituality, not science, is pointing us on the correct path to understanding. Many people believe in strange unsubstantiated explanations of things that are supposedly happening all around us. Indeed a study on “the generality of belief in unsubstantiated claims” published 07 June 2019 in Applied Cognitive Psychology, found indications that some people have a general susceptibility to believe unsubstantiated claims. That includes everything from Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts and conspiracy theories. However, not everyone that believes in some sort of paranormal phenomenon is treated equally. Religion is also unsubstantiated, as are many current working theories in science. We consider the people that have these beliefs to be mostly rational individuals. So what is the basic parameters we can accept to take a belief system seriously, and not commit it to the raving lunacy pile? In my experience its a statement of whats true and whats possible, as well as how established a belief may be. For example, there are archaeologists pursuing proof of the stories in the Bible, although they can only prove the material truths, they feel it would validate the whole truth of the Bible. Compare these to people looking into ruins for technological inconsistencies attempting to further their idea of ancient aliens. The methods are similar, the proof of the ultimate idea (it was God, it was Aliens) will be just as subjective, and yet they are viewed through different cultural lenses. There is a branch of psychology called Anomalistic Psychology which studies the human minds reaction to many things that are considered paranormal. It has many valid explanations for things we find spooky or uncanny, for example a friend calling when we were just thinking about them. Experiments have repeatedly shown that claims such as dowsing and psychic abilities cannot be demonstrated under double blind lab experiments. In many cases the practitioners of such claims will list many excuses as to why this is, and will in no way change their belief in either their abilities or the existence of such abilities. My favorite researchers, such as Chris French, are skeptical but allow for the possibility that the claims are true (within reason). To me that is a truly objective viewpoint, and I urge the reader to look up some of these experiments. The core idea of a belief seems to gauge the testable possibilities of that belief, and the rest seems to be a narration of how and why this idea is the correct answer to what is being observed, and everything that derives from that observation, for example the whys and hows.. The Bible is a narration, string theory has years of work leading to a narration, the ancient alien theory has a narrative, psychics narrate how their abilities work, Ghost hunters narrate hauntings etc. In my experience in the paranormal field, there is a root belief that gets covered in the detritus of narration, and yet every statement of whats “true” has its implications. Furthermore people do not have these beliefs in a vacuum. They talk about it with peers, read books and the internet, watch documentaries and shows. With each of these, some narration sticks to the core belief and not only grows the narrative, but reinforces the idea. Many shows, books, podcasts etc. are indeed preaching to the choir, adding just enough spin to make adherents to that belief feel they have found out something new, or putting forward a new idea to add to the feeling that the “field” is being advanced in some way. The beliefs become truths. A book that is critical to a belief is usually only popular with skeptics that care enough to read it. To be worth writing, the skeptics that care enough to write a book have to either have a strong opposing view or an agenda. A good example is “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. It has sales in the multi-millions because many lifestyles are affected by attitudes formed by religious teachings. It has yet to be seen that maybe a book called “The Ghost Delusion” would be as popular. I doubt it. In fact it has been shown that paranormal skeptics that find publishers for their books in Europe fail to do so in the USA. Much of this has to do with the externalizing of internal beliefs. Unlike religions that have a holy book which acts as a handbook on the belief system, modern spiritualists do not have this. Rather they have a huge pool of ideas and legends to pick and choose what they feel is “true”. Whereas established religions have priests and holy men to closely guard rigid tenets and unanimously defend their belief, there is little hierarchy in spiritualism, and each has their own truth. This truth is formed by the narration that individuals surround themselves in, which is a constantly evolving moving target. It is interesting to me that this being the case, so many people, although removed from religions such as Christianity are more than ready to believe in negative forces such as demons and shadow people. While many modern “Ghost Hunters” use the trappings of science, it really is pseudo science, not just because the equipment and methods are not valid, but because they are using this as a means to externalize a belief, attempt to make it more credible, and will use any readings to validate what they believe to be happening. So could there be anything to the paranormal? Of course, just the idea that invisible energies are all around us is credible (how else does your cell phone work?). Is it then so incredible to think that we haven’t discovered all of them? We have discovered many species in the last 100 years that we thought were extinct, or didn’t know existed, is it possible that an evolutionary branch of Gigantopithecus could still be around somewhere? We are finding many more Earth like planets with the Kepler space telescope than we believed existed, so the chances of intelligent alien life existing is increasing. What makes a belief enter the paranormal orbit? The word means “beyond normal”, or not scientifically explainable. If we think about this for a moment most things we observe about the universe are either in this category or were in it at one time. If we consider lightning for instance, the vikings attributed it to Zeus or Thor, The Hindus to Indra, and so on. As science evolved, it explained lightning as a naturally occurring discharge of electricity. So it moved from paranormal to normal. If we continue the example of lightning however, Scientists are still discussing the details of the charging process, the nature of electromagnetic energy, which shows that for all explanations there are still unknowns as we continue to delve deeper. The paranormal aspect can never really go away, it just gets smaller boundaries as science explains more aspects of a phenomenon. As we will see, human consciousness has not been sufficiently explained, although science is always advancing on how the human brain functions. I think the crux of the matter is probability. Paranormal beliefs are attempts to explain phenomena reportedly observed, felt or experienced with unlikely scenarios. The chances of Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts etc. are improbable due to the lack of empirical evidence. This may then also lead a dedicated believer to deduce that because they believe them to be real, then the evidence must be hidden. Enter the conspiracy theory, and the innate power of a belief to influence how we view the world. A belief, especially a paranormal belief, becomes a part of an individuals makeup. It creates a lens through which we see and judge the world around us. It can impact our everyday lives and decisions. Many of the beliefs we will discuss in these articles have an overriding effect on daily decisions. Throughout history generals, kings and emperors have sought out astrologers, oracles and seers in the belief that gods, otherworldly beings, ancestors or fate have bearings on our current lives and futures. In modern times this has been replaced by empirical data (the D-Day invasion decided on weather readings for example) However the older beliefs still exist today through astrology, mediums and religion (praying to saints for example), even at the highest levels of power. Today psychologists strive to explain why people experience what they believe to be paranormal. There has been much study into things such as dejavu, or the feeling you have been somewhere, or done something before. The Bader Meinhoff phenomenon is the perceived increase in coincidences, for example you have just bought a new car, and now you see many more of them on the road. Psychology has determined that this works because our brains either discard non relevant facts and concentrate on what is relevant to us (our new car model is now relevant), or our brains are trying to priorities information that backs up our beliefs (we bought a good car). In fact the Bader Meinhoff phenomenon is very important in the belief of the paranormal. If we believe in ghosts, and visit a place that is supposedly haunted, our brains will prioritize any “spooky” thing that confirms that belief, such as an irregularity on a photo, and can enhance other effects on the mind such as pareidolia (the brains need to see patterns from chaos, especially faces). This information is important to help an investigator filter out what is noise, and what is there. There is thankfully a small but growing trend away from materialist science to a more agnostic study of phenomena. Some reports of phenomena are too vivid and have widespread medical documentation to be able to just shrug off as fantasy. One of these for example, is near death experiences (NDE) which are intrinsic to human continuance. There are now some quite serious studies into the phenomena surrounding NDEs including studies into reincarnation . These studies are being carried out by accredited scientists into these phenomena under organizations such as IANDS (International Association for Near Death Studies -iands.org). Indeed some organizations such as the Society for Psychic Research have been conducting studies since the 1800s using (mostly) the scientific method. So why do we have so little empirical data? There are two possible reasons, either the phenomena reported are not paranormal and have rational explanations, or we have not yet developed equipment or methods that can detect how spiritual paranormal phenomena is interacting with us. To design such methods and equipment we have to focus on the phenomena and what we think is happening. Hence the narration of the paranormal becomes important. Just as the narration of what the Universe is made of is based on conjecture of observations and experiments, so we must do it with the paranormal. If we look at all the narratives we have as to what types of hauntings have been observed, we must filter out the detritus clinging to the narrative to try to find any common elements. The power of belief is skewing any results we may get in paranormal investigation. Scientists are aware of the power of bias and acknowledge it in their working as best they can. The paranormal field usually does not. Another thing that strikes me about the power of the belief in the paranormal is the almost obsessive need for something to be true. If I believe that my neighbors dog is an Australian Shepherd, and he then tells me its a Golden Retriever, I would take that at face value, because obviously he is more knowledgeable in the breed of his own dog (one would hope) and has nothing to gain by lying to me. However many paranormal beliefs that get disproved go on regardless of who does the debunking. There are many psychics that have been caught in fraudulent activities, and yet still have legions of followers. Orbs in pictures have been shown to be normal dust, hair or insects, yet you can get venomous arguments as to the reason why they are spirits. Experiments in which the exact same astrological readings are given to different people who then agree with that reading are ignored. The attack on a paranormal belief seems to be an attack on the individual on a much deeper level. I have a feeling that humans are intrinsically wired that way, filling in reality with a belief, and perception becomes reality. To attack this is to attack what is for that person real, with no replacement at hand to fill the void for that particular person. So if we can explain the paranormal through science or psychology, why is it such a big deal still? I think the answer to this is that we feel (rightly or wrongly) that there is more to us and the universe than the sum of the parts as material science would have us believe. As we delve deeper into quantum physics, and the theories springing from it, we discover that the universe is a mysterious place. There are many things about the absolute fundamentals we have no idea how they work or even what their nature is. I am willing to allow that the paranormal phenomena may be real in some ways, but I doubt that any of the narratives on how it works have it completely right. If it exists it is seen through an individuals perception of what it is, because at this time we have nothing else to measure it against. Indeed I feel materialist scientists have grown complacent in this field because they have evidence (or lack of) on their side, and its not in their agenda to spend time or money on such a subject. It is also the wild narrations of many people that believe in paranormal occurrences that make mainstream science reluctant to entertain the notion. I also feel that without a benign form of paranormal belief the world would become a grey place indeed.